AMBITIOUS plans to re-build Folkestone’s Channel School as a £40million state-of-the-art specialist academy have passed a vital milestone.

County councillors cleared the way for the academy to go ahead when they approved a detailed planning application for the scheme.

Work on demolishing the school’s existing buildings is now expected to get underway towards the end of the year.

The decision came as a bitter disappointment to residents who had battled to persuade Kent County Council to rethink its plans.

But county education chiefs and the academy’s sponsor Roger de Haan were relieved at the outcome.

Around two dozen protestors attended the meeting of KCC’s planning committee in a last-ditch attempt to stall the academy plan but their lobbying was to no avail.

They urged county councillors to put on hold a decision to allow more time to discuss more changes to the plans and complained a series of concessions made by KCC and Mr De Haan did not go far enough.

Mr De Haan was delighted. “This plan is enormously important for a large number of families in Folkestone and indeed for everyone who lives in Folkestone. I understand the residents’ concerns but there are also a lot of people who support the plan whose opinions have not been reported. We have gone to very great lengths to consider their objections.”

The new school would be a “stunning” building although he warned that the cost of changing the position of the main school building in response to residents’ complaints was likely to add as much as £190,000 to an already-stretched budget.

Bev Rolfe, secretary of the Folkestone Academy Action Group, said the meeting had been a “complete whitewash.”

“Most of the councillors had made up their mind before they even took the decision. Every one of the issues we brought in talks were ignored in the plans that were submitted,” she said.

There was cross-party support for the plans. However, Cllr Brian Copping, who represents the Folkestone North division, said that while he supported the principle of the plan, he believed KCC had “missed an opportunity to do something positive with this site.”

The plan will see the Channel School – currently one of the poorest-performing in Kent - almost double in size to 1,480 pupils and specialise in creative arts and European Culture.